Re: ELisp: special read syntax for regular expressions?

[David Hansen]

On Sat, 5 Apr 2008 11:17:10 +0000 (UTC) Ilya Zakharevich wrote:

> A few of years ago RMS asked me what one could do to make ELisp regular
> expressions more handable.
>
> Now, when the support for Perl REx in CPerl mode is finally finished,
> I think I know the answer: one needs to allow a special read syntax
> for regular expressions (the result being an ordinary string).  This
> way one can avoid the acute backslashitis [by inverting \( and (,
> etc], the regular expressions may be specially indented, and the
> syntax highlighter would have a chance to remove most of the remaining
> complexity by proper highlighting (similar to CPerl one).
>
> What do you think?

Have a look at the Gauche Scheme implementation.  It has a regexp read
syntax: #/.../.

Would be nice to have something like this in Emacs.  It can be hard to
keep track of all the backslashes.

David